


Don't Hold It All Inside Or You Might Explode

by Lilluv



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Apologies, Bisexual Carrie Wilson, Canon Compliant, Carrie Wilson Needs A Hug, Carrie Wilson Redemption, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Lesbian Flynn (Julie and The Phantoms), Making Up, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, References to Depression, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28013139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilluv/pseuds/Lilluv
Summary: Carrie made some big mistakes when Rose died that cost her everything. Well, losing Julie and Flynn felt like everything. She turned into someone she didn't recognize over that year. Finally, after the Orpheum performance, she knew what she had to do, and it was something that she was never any good at. She had to apologize to Julie and Flynn.
Relationships: Flynn/Carrie Wilson, Nick/Carrie Wilson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	Don't Hold It All Inside Or You Might Explode

Carrie, Julie, and Flynn were inseparable their entire childhood. They would have playdates (and hang out when play dates got lame), jam sessions, and tried to take all the same classes so they wouldn't be apart.

Right up until Julie's mom died, that is.

Carrie tried to be there for Julie when Rose died, but she was more likely to recede into herself and deal with her feelings internally when something bad happens, while Julie and Flynn are more feel-it-all-on-the-outside kind of people. She knew that her way of feeling grief wasn't exactly healthy, but being raised by a single dad who wasn't around much didn't give her much of a guide for how to feel her feelings.

And one day, a few weeks after Rose passed, Carrie snapped. She had held it all inside her for too long and she just _couldn't_ anymore. That day was so vivid in her memory, and she feared it would haunt her for the rest of her life.

_Carrie was sitting on Julie's bed with Flynn and Julie, who was holding a song written by her and her mother close to her chest and crying. It was the last thing they ever finished together before she died._

_The three of them were supposed to go to a movie, but Julie couldn't stop crying long enough to get her ass dressed and out the door, and, frankly, Carrie was getting fed up. She wasn't really listening to what Flynn and Julie were saying, just that they were whispering, and not really including her in whatever they were doing (Granted, she was making no effort to include herself, but that's not what was on her mind then)._

_Carrie was done with it._

_"Ugh, it's just a stupid piece of paper, get over it already!" Carrie exclaimed, grabbing it out of Julie's hands and tearing it in half. Julie looked up at her with an unreadable expression on her face, and Flynn looked like she was going to kill her with her bare hands._

_"Get out," Flynn said in a low tone. Carrie turned on her heel and stormed out, walking all the way home back to Malibu with tears streaming down her face._

Carrie had regretted that day for a year. She didn't mean to hurt Julie. She really didn't. But, all of the emotions bottled up inside her just snapped. She knows that's no excuse, but she did regret it.

She couldn't help but think that she had something to do with Julie not playing music for a year. She already had a hard time playing after her mom died, but she knew that her actions probably made it worse.

A few weeks after the incident, she started hanging around with Kayla and the other girls who would eventually turn out to be Dirty Candi. They formed the dance group when they all found how much they love dancing.

Carrie took on the role of writing all the music for the group. She didn't want to write emotional music like she did with Julie, Flynn, and Rose. It was too much too soon. So, she wrote teeth-rotting bubblegum pop and doused her and her and her girls in neon and glitter. She hated her own music and fell into a pit of depression and self-loathing, but she pushed it all down. She didn't want the whole world to know how she really felt.

After Dirty Candi started to get more successful, she kind of drifted apart from the girls. She wasn't sure how to connect to them now that she was their leader.

That's when she started dating Nick.

She would be lying if she said that she didn't force herself on him a little bit. She totally did. She knew it wasn't healthy to be in a relationship with anyone, boy or girl, while she was in this state, but she was becoming obsessed with other people's opinions of her. And the cool girls had boyfriends. The cool girls had a tight-knit circle of friends. The cool girls were bitchy to everyone. So that's what she made herself into.

She had finally built her walls up enough so that she wasn't feeling the pain of losing her two best friends and the only real mother figure she ever had. She was finally starting to feel just a little bit ok.

And then Julie and the Phantoms came around and broke all her walls down.

Within the period of a few weeks, Julie was signing again with some new 'hologram' band (Carrie didn't believe that for a second), and Nick broke up with her. She didn't really love Nick, not romantically at least. He was her best friend, though, so it was really hard to lose him.

After the Orpheum performance, she felt something inside her shift. She wanted to apologize to Julie for what she did... she just didn't know how.

It took her a few days to work up the courage to go to Julie's house. When she finally did, she stood on the porch for a while before knocking.

She finally did, and Ray answered the door. he smiled when he saw her and directed her to the garage. Of course, that's where Julie is.

Carrie heard Julie and Flynn's voices as she approached. She considered just opening the door without knocking, but she wanted to be better than that. So, she knocked.

When she did, the talking inside the garage stopped, then picked back up in a low whisper. Eventually, Carrie heard footsteps, and Julie came and opened the door.

"Carrie?" Julie asked when she saw her. "What are you doing here?"

"I-" Carrie tried, but she truly didn't know how to respond to that. She was here to apologize, but could she say that? Could she really tell Julie that? She was never any good at apologizing.

Flynn came up behind Julie, giving her a pointed look.

"I'm here to apologize," Carrie finally answered the question.

"For what?" Flynn asked.

"For everything," Carrie responded.

"C-come in," Julie stuttered. She glanced all around the room before gesturing to the couch, where she sat down. Julie sat down in the middle, and Flynn sat on the armrest behind Julie.

Carrie considered letting one of them start the conversation, but she just wanted to get this out.

"I wanted to say sorry for how I've treated the two of you for the past year," Carrie started. "I have been a total bitch."

"Yeah, no shit," Flynn said, then Julie gave her a pointed look.

"I feel so bad for everything that I have done to the two of you this past year. You guys didn't deserve it, and I'm sorry. And, Julie," Carrie looked right at her, and Julie held an unreadable expression on her face. "I am so _so_ sorry for snapping at you and ripping that song. I shouldn't have done it, and I regretted it the second I did it."

Julie smiled, glanced to the otherwise empty room, her smile getting a little wider, then said, "I forgive you," and pulled Carrie into a hug.

Carrie, surprised, melted into her former best friend's arms. She looked up at Flynn, who was smiling at her.

Julie pulled away with tears in her eyes, causing Carrie to start crying, too. Julie shot a pointed look at the same patch of empty air she was looking at before.

"Ok, what's over there?" Carrie looked carefully at the empty room, not seeing anything out of the ordinary.

"Oh, boy, here we go," Flynn giggled, and Julie rolled her eyes.

Julie took a deep breath, nodding in the direction of the empty space.

"So, you know my hologram band?" Julie started.

"Yeah?" Carrie responded, intrigued to see where this was going.

"They're not really holograms. They're ghosts," Julie said.

"Ghosts?" Carrie asked. "Like white-sheet-jump-out-and-say-boo kind of ghosts?"

"No," Julie responded, then added, "Well, Reggie is a little bit, but that's not the point. They're ghosts that only I can see normally, but everyone can see them when we play together."

Carrie wasn't sure what to do with that. There were a lot of things running through her head of what Julie's band could possibly be, but ghosts never crossed her mind.

"That's not all," Flynn added.

"Should I really tell her now?" Julie asked Flynn under her breath. "That's a lot for one day."

"Just tell her!" Flynn said a little louder.

"Ok!" Julie said, throwing her hands up in surrender, then turned back to Carrie.

"So this may be hard to process," Julie warned.

"As if the ghosts weren't enough," Carrie muttered. She wasn't sure why she was just accepting this, but she was.

"The ghosts are also your dad's old bandmates from when he was a teenager," Julie added.

"Wait wait wait," Carrie said. "Alex Mercer, Luke Patterson, and Reggie Peters?"

Julie and Flynn looked at each other, then said, "What?" at the same time.

"Dad is always talking about Alex, Luke, and Reggie, his bandmates who died when they were about to play the Orpheum. I guess it never connected until now..." Carrie trailed off.

Suddenly, Julie said, "Now is not the time," towards the empty ai- ghosts. The ghosts of Carrie's dad's dead bandmates. Then, she got up off the couch with a huff and sat down at the piano.

"Luke wants to show you how they appear when we play together," Julie explained, then started playing a song on her piano that Carrie recognized as _Flying Solo_. They played it at her concert in her backyard a few weeks ago.

Carrie wasn't surprised when Alex, Luke, and Reggie showed up. What she was surprised by, though, was Flynn taking her hand and leading her over to where they were playing (and if she was blushing because her crush since forever was holding her hand, then no one needed to know that). She smiled at all of them and even exchanged a few words with them while there was an instrumental section in the song. She was even a little sad when they disappeared.

Julie got up from her piano when the song ended and walked over to where Carrie was standing.

"So, friends again?" Julie suggested.

"Friends again," Carrie confirmed, and Flynn nodded and smiled. The three of them hugged.

* * *

It had been a few months since Carrie made up with Julie and Flynn made up, and Carrie's life really was changing for the better.

She was spending most of the time that she wasn't rehearsing Dirty Candi with her best friend and girlfriend. Yes, girlfriend. She and Flynn finally got their shit together after some not-so-subtle nudging from Julie and the ghosts, and Carrie couldn't remember a time when she was happier.

All of her music for Dirty Candi became less shallow and more like her writing used to be now that she could write that way again without breaking down and crying.

Speaking of breakdowns, Carrie's mental health had gotten better over the past few months, too. She tore down all the unhealthy walls she built up over the past year and really opened back up to her friends. She got a little closer to the Dirty Candi girls, too, which made her so happy.

She finally felt like she could be happy with her life, and it made her feel so much better about herself, too. And she had Julie and Flynn to thank for that. She had them to thank for almost all the good things in her life, and for once she was ok with that.

She was so happy she worked up the courage to apologize. It was the best decision she ever made.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am shamelessly using the last names for Reggie and Alex that were just confirmed on the JATP Instagram. Leave me alone lol.  
> Thank you so much for reading! Comments and Kudos are always appreciated.  
> Kisses!  
> -Lilluv


End file.
